So Apple is going to do a 180 and suddenly switch to being anti-privacy and pro-advertising. Disable the Safari content blockers they only recently added, end the advertising campaigns they just started using. And all for a tiny 1% of their revenue ?

Privacy is a fundamental part of Apple's selling proposition and personal to Tim Cook given that in many cases gay and other minorities are killed due to privacy leaks.

> Privacy is a fundamental part of Apple's selling proposition

From earlier today :

"Note: Though we cannot bring an official Tor Browser to iOS due to restrictions by Apple"

(https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-85)

Money is the only part of Apple's selling proposition. It's nice they cater to the privacy conscious for the time being, for the time being.

Here's the whole quote

> Note: Though we cannot bring an official Tor Browser to iOS due to restrictions by Apple, the only app we recommend is Onion Browser, developed by Mike Tigas with help from the Guardian Project.

Your truncated quote makes it sound like Apple doesn't allow private Tor browsing. There are other Tor browsers on the App store. What Apple doesn't allow is third-party HTML renderers and JavaScript engines (Tor Browser is based on Firefox)

> Privacy is a fundamental part of Apple's selling proposition and personal to Tim Cook given that in many cases gay and other minorities are killed due to privacy leaks.

Is it part of an immutable corporate charter? Is Tim Cook an immortal lich-king, with absolute authority, that will preside over Apple between now, and the heat death of the universe?

Company culture changes, company priorities change, company leaders change, and shareholders always want more money. If advertising will get Apple more money, it's just a matter of when, not if.

Company culture isn't going to change much at Apple.

They have programs like Apple University and the memory of Steve Jobs will always loom large over the company.

And Apple could've focused primarily on advertising decades ago. But they didn't because it's just not in their DNA. They are and will forever be a widgets company.

20 years ago, they were an overpriced-computer vendor on their deathbed, with not a widget in sight, burdened with a trailing-edge OS, while Microsoft was an unstoppable behemoth that was eating the world (While convinced that this internet thing was just a fad.)

You have no idea what they will be 20 years from now.

> Privacy is a fundamental part of Apple's selling proposition and personal to Tim Cook given that in many cases gay and other minorities are killed due to privacy leaks.

I love the privacy aspect, but is privacy really part of Apple's core strategy or are we just seeing them make use of the good position they were always in? Is there enough drive at Apple (Cook or otherwise) to keep privacy a focus, or is the topic just going to fall by the wayside when it suits the business?

Look at the implementation of Secure Enclave, FaceID, Apple Pay and ML models.

They build these very carefully to keep your data secure, on-device and inaccessible to third parties. They definitely could've implemented these much quicker and arguably better (e.g. ML models) if they had a device-cloud hybrid.

Yeah but they still sell you out to Google as soon as you open safari. Apple cares more about $ than privacy

2B to Apple is couch change.

Rome wasn't built in a day. I'm sure there's slide decks that float much bigger future numbers to decision-makers in the firm.